Are you aware of all of the IRA permitted investments? Are you looking for low risk IRA investments? Here, you will find a few facts that may surprise you.

Not Many Investors Take Advantage

Traditionally, banks and brokerages have managed retirement accounts for individuals. They offered certificates of deposit, money markets, stocks and mutual funds. Only about 4% of retirement investors take advantage of all of the IRA permitted investments, simply because they don’t know that they are available.

There are a few investment vehicles that are not allowed under the tax law. But, practically any low risk IRA investments are allowed.

What Many Retirement Investors Don’t Know

You can invest in commercial or residential real estate, houses, apartment buildings, raw land, mortgage notes, LLCs, tax liens, foreign currencies, private placements, judgments, structured settlements, gold bullion, car loans and more. You cannot invest in antiquities, collectibles and other property that is difficult to value and/or difficult to liquidate.

Usually, the low risk IRA investments also earn the lowest rate of returns. But, when it comes to the real estate market, you can get high returns with little or no risk. You just need a little help, so that you know what to look for.

Not A Good Idea For Retirement Investments

Of the IRA permitted investments, some of the riskiest are foreign currencies. The FOREX market is a lot like Vegas. You are gambling with your money, to say the least.

Decent Results But Difficult

People sometimes see good results with buying tax liens. They are typically purchased from county governments. If the homeowner comes forward to pay the bill, you get the money. If not, you get the house. The only problem is that you then have to find a buyer. There are better low risk IRA investments in the real estate market.

Best Idea – The Hidden Real Estate Market

As traditional real estate investors and developers began to build bigger, more expensive homes, low and middle income Americans were left behind. They are mostly blue-collar workers. Many of them have excellent credit and they would love to fulfill the American dream of home ownership, but they cannot afford a quarter million dollar home.

In some areas, there is actually a waiting list for affordable homes in desirable areas. The people on these waiting lists could benefit from your IRA permitted investments and you could see a nice return on your investment, far better than anything that you could find in the stock market or the banking industry. This is the “hidden real estate market” many savvy and inexperienced retirement investors are taking advantage of.

Low Risk – High Returns -

Helping people find the affordable housing that they need is among the low risk IRA investments, because the people are already there. The houses are already there, but they need attention, just to make them attractive and “livable”.

You don’t have to have a lot of experience to get into this type of investing. But, if you don’t have a lot of experience, I would not recommend that you “go it alone”. First, you’ll need a good custodian that allows self-directed investing. Then you’ll need to investigate all of your options and take advantage of the help that is offered.

Now, that you know about the IRA permitted investments, your next step is to make more money. You’ll retire in comfort.

By: Jefferson Davis

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Investing money in your 401k need not be a stressful thing. Here’s a real simple investment strategy to lighten your load and help you make money with less risk.

First, decide whether you want to be conservative, middle-of-the-road, or aggressive when investing money in your 401k plan. THINK before you make your decision, because aggressive investing means more risk; and conservative means less potential profits. You must be comfortable with this decision before you put together an investment strategy.

Now, let’s get to the easy part and assume you want to go middle-of-the-road or moderate. You need an investment strategy. This means that you pick the investment options you want to invest money in, and what percent goes to each. After you’ve done this you need an investment strategy for managing your portfolio over time.

So, you decide to invest money as follows: 40% to domestic (U.S.) stock funds, 20% to international stock funds, 20% to intermediate-term bond funds and 20% to the safe stable account (or money market fund if your plan does not have one). This is called your asset allocation for contributions. This is how the money they take out of your paycheck is invested.

If you already have funds in your account, have them switch you to the above percentages.

Now, here’s the important part if you want to make money over the long term without much effort or stress. Over time, some of the investment options you picked to invest money in will do better than others; and some will be losers from time to time.

For example, in 2008 virtually all stock funds lost money because the stock market tanked. Investors in 401k plans without a sound investment strategy did not make money … they lost big bucks. On average they had about 60% of their money in stock funds and just let it ride.

Here’s your investment strategy. You rebalance your assets periodically. If your stock funds take significant losses, move money from your other investment options to bring your stock funds back to 40% of the total. Ditto, your other investment options. The important thing is that you don’t let your percentages get out of line.

In our example you decided to invest money like this: 40% … 20% … 20% … 20% in the various investment options. Rebalance when necessary to keep these percentages within a few percentage points of your original targets. By doing this you automatically take advantage of swings in value of the various investment options.

For example, stocks got nailed in 2008 but rebounded 50% from March to September in 2009. Had you rebalanced when stocks were down, you’d have made up for much of your previous losses.

Here’s the really good news for some of you. Many 401k plans offer automatic rebalance service. You just tell them how often you want to rebalance (like once a year) and they do the rest for you, automatically. If this is available, take advantage of it. Few 401k investors do, probably because they know nothing about it. Now, you do.

By: James Leitz

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Ever wondered about self directed IRA Investments? I’m sure you’ve probably heard that they can bring returns far out pacing the standard custodian directed IRA accounts. But maybe you’ve been told that the rules governing the IRA permitted investments are just to difficult to understand and navigate. Or that they’re only for the sophisticated investor.

The truth is that self directed IRA Investments can be used by anyone affectively if they follow a few simple actions.

The first point here is that your IRA must be setup with a knowledgeable self directed IRA custodian. These are the individuals that oversee your account and make sure that all the paperwork is filled out correctly,and that your transactions are legal and organized.

Self directed IRA investments can be a great help in maximizing your gains and diversifying your portfolio, because most IRA custodians only lead you to invest in things they get commissions on and that they are comfortable with. Unfortunately these areas of their expertise and comfort may not be the best investment for your highest and best return. To get the best possible returns, remember the point of your IRA account is for your comfort after retirement not so your custodian is comfortable right now.

The comfort that you are concerned with your custodian having is the kind that comes with experience in overseeing transactions in the broad areas of investment vehicles that the government allows for self directed IRAs and the rules that govern these accounts.

So you must look for a custodian that allows self directed IRA investments in a broad range of the IRA permitted investments and is very knowledgeable about the rules.

There’s a problem here though because according to one study conducted by Forbes 90% of IRA account custodians don’t know all of the IRA permitted investments or how they’re supposed to be used. This means that there are very few truly capable custodians out there regardless of what firm they maybe affiliated with or how much they charge.

And of course knowing what the IRA permitted Investments are is the key we are after.

It may surprise you to find out just how many types of investment vehicles are allowed. In fact self directed IRA Investments nearly mirror main stream investing options with only a few exceptions.

The IRS won’t allow investments in collectibles or life insurance.

But really the governments main concern is that it doesn’t want to see any type of self dealing. That is they don’t want you to benefit from a transaction with your IRA. The IRS wants your only benefit to be the tax advantaged return that your IRA gets. So for instance, you are not allowed to sell anything to the IRA, if you did you would be getting double benefits in the form of the tax advantages of the IRA and the personal profits from the sell to the IRA.

Nor would you be allowed to live in a home or apartment owed by your IRA. It’s important to stay away from this type of double dipping.

This ban applies not only to you but to anyone closely related to you in your business and family life. Both you and the people in this group are considered disqualified persons.

Aside from those transactions your options can include many things like derivatives, notes, venture capital investments, futures, Real Estate and more.

Real Estate for example is one of the little known permitted IRA investments that is gaining in popularity because of the incredible returns possible by investing in property. You will definitely want to make sure your custodian is knowledgeable and experienced in administering investments in this area.

Now do yourself a favor and take advantage of self directed IRA investments with an administrator that really knows the rules on IRA permitted investments.

By: Will Pressley

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